Professor Emeritus Philip Adams

IN MEMORIAM Professor Emeritus Philip Adams Professor Emeritus Philip Adams died suddenly on November 1, 1997, after a debilitating illness. An orthodontist of the highest international reputation, Philip Adams was best known for devising a system of removable appliances based on the Adams clasp, which revolutionized retention of these devices. These innovations are encapsulated in his well-known book on the subject, which has run to six editions and has been translated into several foreign languages. Another of his accomplishments was the Belfast Growth Study-a meticulously collected longitudinal set of records of children between the ages of 5 and 15 years. He was also a notable inventor of apparatus such as the Adams Cephalostat and the Adams Blink Comparator. Adams saw service in the Royal Navy during the war and thereafter was lecturer at the University of Liverpool and the Eastman Dental Hospital in London before returning to Belfast as senior lecturer; he was elevated to the rank of reader in 1964 and professor in 1974. Since his retirement in 1984, he has been professor emeritus in the Queen's University. One-time president of the British Society for the Study of Orthodontics, a life member of the British Dental Association, and president of the BDA Northern Ireland Branch, he was a prominent figure at meetings whether local, national, or international. During his innovative spell as dean of the dental school, he saw the initiation of a training scheme for dental chairside assistants as one of his triumphs. An Ulsterman of high intellect, unrivaled common sense, and unequaled manual dexterity, he took everything back to the basic principles-to what he would call, with a twinkle, the fundamental basics. This applied equally to mechanical, scientific, and political matters. As an example, take the Adams clasp. Where are the undercuts? How can we get into them with sufficient elasticity and strength? Ergo, the Adams clasp. It all seems quite simple in retrospect, but it took a man like Adams to devise it. "What is the problem," he would say, "let's solve it," and on Monday morning after a busy weekend he would demonstrate a beautifully made prototype that was presented

Professor Philip Adams

for criticism, not admiration. He could not stand or understand bullish and instant decisions. Problems were there to be savored, solved, considered, and crafted in simple but elegant English into the resulting publication. New equipment was dismantled on arrival, and the pieces scattered around the floor of his room while he found out how it worked. Somehow, it all fit together again with some small but telling improvement. Aside from his work and his family, Philip's great passions were photography, on which he published a book, music, clocks, sundials, computers, and people. Not content with playing the violin, he made violins, practiced on them with every cat in the neighborhood joining in, and lectured on violin construction around the world, notably to the Anglo-Scandinavian study circle where he had many close friends. He was a prominent member of the Ulster Horological Society and coincidentally turned his talents to sundials, a subject on which he lectured widely and organized conferences. Examples of his sundials are to be found from Northern Ireland to Nigeria. A devoted family man, Philip will be sadly missed by his wife, Audrey, and their children, Caroline, William, Lucy, and Rachel. They have the sympathy of his many friends around the world.

American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics/March 1998

Andrew Richardson

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